🔗 The Joy of Ex-Lib Books – Jamie Todd Rubin:

Among my favorite types of books in my collection are ex-lib books—or as I like to think of them, retired library books. I received one in the mail recently, Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling by Thomas Hager, and handling it reminded me of why I love this form of book.

For one thing, they are generally hefty. I don’t know if the books sold to libraries are manufactured to be more durable than the average book, but they feel durable. Quite a few of the Isaac Asimov books I’ve collected over the years are ex-lib books and they all have that same heft to them.

Ex-lib books frequently come with a protective coating over the dust jacket. This offers two pleasant conveniences. First, it keeps the dust jacket from sliding off when reading the book. Second, it makes a delightfully crunchy sound when opening and closing the book. That sound, to me, is the sound of reading.

I have gotten a bunch of these sorts of books from ordering via Biblio (which is great, btw, and not yet associated with Amazon), and they are always neat.

It made me think of going to the public library as a kid and getting library bound copies of old novels. I feel like I don’t see those much anymore, but I always kind of loved the bright orange and green buckram covers with the crazy pattern, and the author, title, and catalog number stamped on the spine in white san serif font that looked like it was straight from an IBM Selectric II.